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Google courts record companies before its planned music store debut

Google Inc., which plans to launch its long-rumored music store Wednesday, is still furiously working behind the scenes to get key music companies onboard with its plan to take on Apple Inc.'s iTunes and challenge numerous competing digital music services.

After more than a year of negotiations, the Silicon Valley search giant is on the verge of signing a deal with Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company. The deal would allow Google to sell digital downloads of Universal's vast catalog of music and offer a licensed cloud service that lets users tap into their collections of Universal recording artists from any Web browser, said people close to the talks who declined to be named citing the confidentiality of the discussions.http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1117-ct-google-music-20111115,0,6907680.story